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School

University of Waterloo

Department

International Studies

Course

INTST 101

Professor

Brian Orend

Semester

Fall

Description

INTST 101: Introduction to International Studies Brian Orend
Unit 1: Core Concepts and Historical Context
The main goal of this course is to provide you with a
fundamental, comprehensive “literacy” regarding the
main concepts and trends in international studies. What
is “international studies”, for example. Well, we all
know what studying is—but what are we studying?
Important things and events which happen between
nations (hence “inter-national”). But what’s a nation?
What’s the international community? What exactly is the domain of discourse, so to speak?
“International” means “between nations”, or maybe more precisely, “between countries.” A
nation is a group which thinks of itself as a unique and separate people. Nation-hood is usually
based on such shared attributes as ethnicity; language; culture; historical experience and
memory; religion and culture (both high and low, which is to say, elite and popular); cuisine;
fashion; habitat; sets of values and views about the world; and so on. Nationalism is a major
force in world history, especially since the collapse of the Roman Empire and then the rise of
religious pluralism in the Western world, following the Protestant Reformation and the end of
the monopoly of the Roman Catholic Church. Different nations arose in Europe—groups with
these common attributes—and they came to dominate political and social and economic life, and
the trend spread out from there across the globe. More on that shortly.
A major drive and focus of nationalism has been national groups each seeking their own state.
What’s a state? Since I’ve been using the sociologist Max Weber’s definition of the nation, let’s
get his say on the state. A state is simply the government which organizes the life of a people in
a given territory. All together, a state and its nation and its territory form a country, like
England, France, Australia, America, Japan, etc. You may have heard the term “nation-state.”
This refers to a kind of country where the nation over which the state governs is quite
homogenous and similar. It is a highly unified people. A classic example is Japan. Contrast this
with countries like Canada or America, which have been populated with immigration from
different peoples all over the world. In these kinds of countries, there are, so to speak, many
nations governed by a single government. Some political scientists, as a result, call these
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countries “multi-national states.” For instance, in Canada, we have one federal government, but
arguably many nations—the major ones being the different Aboriginal, English-speaking and
French-speaking communities. More recently-arrived ones are also developed, or developing, for
instance the Chinese-speaking communities in B.C.
So, when we speak of “international”, we mean relations between countries. Relations of: trade
and economics; war and peace; emigration and immigration; tourism and travel; diplomacy;
culture and religion; educational exchanges; dealing with shared environmental problems; and so
on. All these are subjects we shall focus on in this course. There has never been a better time to
study “international studies”, as we are more and more aware, than ever before, of other
countries and their societies. Moreover, we are more and more influenced, than ever before, by
the international community. Economies are tied more closely together via free trade agreements.
We all watch Hollywood movies. We all surf the “World Wide Web.” We all buy products made
in China. We all go to the grocery store and buy produce and prepare meals that, even just 20
years ago, would have been thought incredibly exotic, exclusive and expensive. Now it’s part of
the increasingly diverse and more flavourful fabric of our everyday lives. It’s a globalizing
world, and because of its impact on our lives, we need to study it more intensively.
Globalization refers to the growing integration between the world’s many peoples, countries and
cultures through increased trade, social and political exchange, culture and media,
communications technologies and international investment.
Some Historical Background
The world hasn’t always been this globalizing way.
There tends to be periods of increased integration and
globalization, followed by periods where integration
shrinks and countries and nations turn more into
themselves, and rivalries between groups become
more common. There’s a cycle, so to speak, between
co-operation and competition between groups and
nations. Sometimes, there’s good reason for such
trends, other times not so much. There are great benefits to be had from free trade, for example,
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but sometimes rivalries spill over into conflict for reasons which aren’t entirely rational. More on
the causes of conflict later. For now, we note the historical cycle, and comment that there has not
been one steadily rising trend towards more and more globalization. To take but one example, in
the 1800s, there was a clear wave of globalization and free trade, especially as secured by the
power and prosperity of Great Britain and its Royal Navy. But that era came to an end when the
group rivalries in Europe burst forth into the First World War (1914-18). There is nothing natural
or guaranteed about globalization and international co-operation and integration: it gets secured
through the deliberate will, and set of institutions, constructed by like-minded and powerful
countries. When those countries are in a good mood, so to speak, we see growth, co-operation,
and free trade. When they aren’t, we see spirals downwards into distrust and eventually conflict.
For instance, many experts have said that the recent wave of globalization has been brought
about by the dominance of America, and its status as the global hegemon, which is to say the
most powerful country in the world. Globalization is happening because America wants it to
happen: it is an expression of American values, and America drives globalization because of the
strength of its political and economic influence around the world. Some people have even argued
that we may already be witnessing the beginning of the end of this wave of globalization, as
stronger countries are now beginning to emerge (like China or India or Iran) which might
effectively challenge America’s authority, and lead us into one of those periods of group rivalry,
lack of economic co-operation, and perhaps even back down into widespread war.
The American Empire
When you consider the international world as a whole,
we can see that the international world can either be
described as ordered, or else disordered. When it is
disordered, it is because of one of these eras of intense
group rivalry and conflict. But when it is ordered, it is
usually because one, or a very small number, of
countries has the preponderance of power and can
enforce its will upon the rest. (There is another way of
trying to order international society, and that is through international law, but that is the subject
3 INTST 101: Introduction to International Studies Brian Orend
of the next lecture.) When international order is brought about through the dominant power of
one country, it is called the hegemon. America is today’s global hegemon. People also speak of
regional hegemons, like for example Brazil within the context of South America. With the end
of the Cold War between the USA and the USSR, which ended in 1990 with the collapse of the
USSR, America became the unrivalled global hegemon. Some people even dubbed the term
“hyper-power”, to replace “super-power”, which up to that point had been applied both to
America and Russia.
No one denies that America is a global hegemon, or the hyper-power. But what does get debated,
very hotly, is whether America is an empire, and whether the current world order is actually one
of American empire. Let’s examine this debate from two angles: 1) whether the USA has an
empire, or not; and then 2) whether, if it does have an empire, whether this is a good or bad
thing.
The View that America does NOT have an empire
Many Americans, if you ask them, will deny quite
strongly that they are an empire. They will say that,
look, empire is a cynical, old world game played by
other peoples, especially Europeans, and it is all about
power and status. But America was formed on a non-
cynical, indeed, optimistic moral vision about what a
political community could be like. It could, and ought,
to be about things more sublime than power, and
who’s on top and who’s on bottom. Political society should be about securing individual rights to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. America, to that extent, was created to be a new kind of
society, and thus to tar it with the same old brush of European imperialism and colonialism just
isn’t right. In other words, the accusation that America has an empire goes against everything
which Americans get taught about their country in school, and so it meets with very strong
resistance.
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But the deniers do have a point. They say, look, empire is about a formal relationship of
dependency and exploitation between the core (the mother country, the locus of empire) and the
periphery (the colonies, the dependencies, the hinterland). Think, for instance, of the old Roman
and Spanish and French and British empires. The peripheries were run by, and used for the
benefit of, the cores. Resources were sucked from the colonies into the capitals. Peoples were
sent out from the cores to claim the hinterland and colonize it on behalf of the mother country,
replicating and reproducing its way of life elsewhere. And the peripheries were governed by state
structures set up by the core, and run by officials who came from the core. But America, the
deniers say, has no such formal relations with countries outside its own borders (with a few very
small exceptions, like some islands in the Pacific taken over during the Pacific phase of the
Second World War). America might be incredibly powerful, but technically it’s not at all an
empire. People just use the word “empire” because it’s so negative, and they want to criticize
America because they are jealous of its power and wealth.
The View that America DOES Have an Empire
This reply focuses on making a distinction between
formal and informal empire. Formal empire, as
defined above, is an old-style, European mode of
empire. America may not exactly fit that mould. But
there can be other modes of power and dependency
that are just as relevant. In an informal empire, there
are no formal, legally declared links between core and
periphery, nor formal, publicly-declared links of dependency. But America is nevertheless able
to set up the ground-rules of the world system in its favour. It chooses not to formally declare an
empire, in other words, but that doesn’t mean that it is not there. These people say that America
fulfils all the traditional criteria of being an imperial core: it has the biggest economy; the biggest
military; it is politically the most influential; it has the biggest consumer base, and is a magnet
for both foreign investment and immigration. Also, America does have some of the more formal
aspects of empire. Did you know, for instance, that America currently operates 700 military
bases outside its own borders?
5 INTST 101: Introduction to International Studies Brian Orend
There are even so-called revisionist historians who dispute the happy tale about America’s
founding values, suggesting that that vision is pure myth-making, telling people what they want
to believe. They say we should re-vision history, and see America as an imperial project right
from the start. From the very first moment of its founding in 1620, by the Pilgrims at Plymouth
Rock, America has witnessed one steady outwards expansion as its core communities sought to
get territory, subject peoples who stood in their way, and claim land and power, from East to
West and down to Texas and Florida. If you look at a historical map of the growth of the United
States, you just see this clear, relentless, westward and southward and northward expansion of
territorial control, and then, even as the continent filled up, you saw the growth spreading over
into Alaska and Hawaii and then, after the Second World War (1939-1945) into Germany and
Japan. And now, today, into the Middle East (to secure the oil supply and Israel). America has
imperialism running in its veins, the revisionists say—you better believe it’s an empire.
The View that America does have an empire, and this is GOOD
I leave it to you to decide whether America is an
empire. Let’s move further into the debate: assuming
America does have an empire, does that have to be a
bad thing? Empire is a bad word, generally, because
we associate with it the infliction of power and the
absence of democracy. But, need it be? There is a
group of people who actually say that, yes, America is
an empire—but that this is a good thing for the world.
What is their argument?
The argument is that America is the only country on earth capable of bringing some order to the
globe and capable of preventing it from sliding back down into anarchy—an un-governed,
chaotic condition of complete fighting and conflict between the various groups. So, American
empire is good because it is a source of stability which everyone benefits from. These thinkers,
like Paul Wolfowitz, also argue that American empire has been great for people’s standards of
living. If you look at world GDP (Gross Domestic Product, which measures economic activity)
since America became the clearly dominant Western power (in 1945, after the end of WWII and
6 INTST 101: Introduction to International Studies Brian Orend
the collapse of the British and French empires), and then clearly since America became the
dominant world power (in 1990, following the collapse of the Soviet empire), you see very
steady and remarkable increase. This is because of the values of capitalism and free trade which
America stands for. America knows how to run profitable businesses and how to run a
productive free market economy which increases everyone’s standard of living. So, American
empire has generated more money, and a higher standard of living, for its subjects. Finally, the
pro-American empire people say that the American empire stands for great values: human rights,
individual freedom, free markets, democracy, free and fair elections, separation of church and
state; and the growth of science and technology. To the extent that it spreads these values, it does
the world a favour. American empire is nothing to apologize for, these supporters say: it has
generated very good consequences and has made the world a better place. We should all be
happy with the dominance of the United States in the world today. What’s that phrase again? Oh
yeah: God Bless America!
The View that America does have an empire, and this is BAD
Noam Chomsky, among others, has been one of the fore